You can see the full list of e-mails obtained by Judicial Watch between MAIG leadership. Bitter linked to earlier today. It’s rather long, but 90% of it is uninteresting. But it does offer a view into the world of our opponents in the first few weeks after Sandy Hook. Some takeaways, some of which are different than the Blaze article:
- They still don’t really know who their enemy is. Reading their e-mails, they are a very much top-down movement. They coordinate to a much much greater degree than we do. While they were coordinating our opposition from the top, we were all watching a grassroots movement self-mobilize, and just trying to help spread the word and contribute any way we could.
- They really do believe their own BS about the NRA representing the gun industry. A lot of them wisely realized that assault weapons were a bridge too far, but assumed it was because it threatened industry profits rather than the fact that gun and magazine bans really really piss off our grassroots. Colorado’s recalls I think helped drive that message home.
- Mark Glaze was smart for being skeptical of former Senator “Monkeybusiness” Gary Hart wanting to start a new false flag group. That would have been laughable.
- Someone formerly in the gun control movement approached MAIG looking for a job back in the gun control movement around page 420. Feinblatt asked Glaze if they should hire him. Glaze responded with “I don’t think so – but part of me wants to. XXXXXX really screwed him.” They did a good job of blacking out that person’s info, but I’d really love to see under who XXXXXX was, because I have some speculations.
- From the balance sheets included, MAIG is bankrolling a lot of the movement. They’ve given money to CSGV, among others. My guess is this is to keep them in line and compliant with MAIG’s leadership. Brady, as the Blaze article mentioned, stepped on their toes and got knocked for it by MAIG.
- PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s office takes recommendations from MAIG on page 429. That’s about 3/4 of the way down. Someone should file a PA equivalent of a FOIA request for documents relating to that. I’d do it myself, but I lack tim and familiarity with the process. If someone is more familiar with the process, it would be worth knowing exactly in what manner MAIG is/was coordinating with AG Kane’s office.
- See page 442 and note some of those recommendations. Know what their end goals are. It’s right there.
- The NFL and most of the sports teams are our enemies.
- The media coordinates with the anti-gunners. For instance, on page 518, it’s mentioned that certain cartoonists are onboard with gun control.
- This is a movement of political elites and celebrities, and not of ordinary people. We knew that, of course, but it’s always good to see that confirmed behind the scenes. From the looks of it, MAIG only really writes checks to consultants, media groups, lobbyists, PR flacks and polling firms.
I would encourage other people to take a look at the documents. I can read very fast, but at that speed I miss an awful lot, and I don’t really have time to read through everything carefully. The e-mails stop at January 22, 2013. I think the best stuff would be after that date, when the real political fight heats up.
Wonder if “Congressman Grimm” will suffer any repercussions because of this? Seems like he’s been giving comfort to the enemy, although I’m sure a NY Republican has to walk a finer line.
I’m sure Bob Owens is reading this, but it might be a decent idea to push these documents his way. He has a column over at Instapundit that could get broader exposure to the big jewels.
From a “media strategy” point of view it seems wise to drip and drab these out over a few months. All at once it is just too much for people to consume, but this could generate regular fodder for some time and keep the docs on people’s scopes longer.
Most of it really is pretty uninteresting and unsurprising. I’m sure there’s stuff I missed, but I don’t think there’s any real juicy stuff in there. I think most of the interesting stuff is going to be beyond the date this goes to. Hopefully they can get more.
Interesting highlight:
Page 243. A fellow named “David Cohen” writes about a social/political strategy.
He draws on the history of the civil rights movement, which used churches and other social networks to pressure legislators to take action under LBJ (in his view). He wants to create a similar movement.
The thing is, they don’t get it. The civil rights movement was successful in this regard by tapping into PREVIOUSLY EXISTING networks. Nobody woke up and decided to start the “First Church of Brown v. Board.” They got into existing congregations and tapped them. As anyone who has tried to build an organization or network knows, it is by far faster to tap into and coopt pre-existing nets than to build new ones.
They highlight a desire to get access to (1) churches, (2) MADD, (3) work from moms to get to males (4) use children for political purposes and (5) rural & small towns.
In order to get into the tougher areas, they want to use existing vertical networks such as the Fraternal Order of Police, NRA (hah!), sportsmen & hunters, mental health professionals, etc.
Finally, they want to tap technology and convince silicon valley to come out against guns, and use a “Rumor Control Team” of online gurus to crush “rumors and lies.” Kind of like reasoned discourse, I suppose.
It does not seem like they have been very effective at tapping those pre-existing networks to carry their water… in some ways. I am concerned about, for example, the FOP. Increasingly, cops are being pitted against citizens who own firearms. This will force cops even outside CT and NY to make decisions about where their loyalties lie. Likewise, infiltration of the mental health system, propagandizing to children, etc are all long term techniques that will be tough to counter.
Yeah, it’s amazing how much it shows that they buy their own BS. They are all top down. They have no idea how to even go about building a grassroots movement. But that’s the problem they have, really. You can’t build it from the top down. There has to first be a grassroots movement, and if there is, it will soon build civil institutions around it.
“They have no idea how to even go about building a grassroots movement.”
I think one way to state their practical problem is, we all started out loving guns for our own cultural reasons, whatever they were. No one really had to “organize” us in that. So if (excuse the word) hate is a great political motivator — and it is — we hate those who are attacking what we love. No one needs to propagandize us much to accomplish that, and we need only guard against allowing our motivations to be diverted.
On their side, they have to motivate their supporters to hate us, more or less starting from scratch, and all they have to work with is propaganda that has to be organized from the top down. We have the advantage of not needing to be motivated, in order to want to defend our own territory, and it is territory we are familiar with and can maneuver in readily.
Page 428: Gary Hart wants to tap into the National Guard as a group of “responsible gun owners” who will help marginalize the NRA.
I don’t think these guys have a clue.
That’s part the Blaze picked up on too. Hart was too much even for Mark Glaze. That was never going to work. It almost makes me sorry they didn’t fall for it, because it would have been a) a huge distraction and waste of money, and b) totally worthless now because it would have been exposed as a fraud.
Page 521, an org chart for field organization. One position under digital is “SHOW OF FORCE.” Interestingly, it is formatted the same as names of people filling other positions.
Hrm. My initial impression is that this is some sort of code name for an effort to surge social media with sock puppetry.
Page 524: They are targeting 30 key districts with key federal elected officials who are “more pro-gun than their constituents.” I hope our side is getting the grass roots fired up in those districts. We need to be pushing Appleseeds, Hunter’s Ed, NRA FIRST STEPs classes, gun range access, etc in these areas.
Page 546: MAIG’s primary guy in NYC GOV (John Feinblatt) asks Mark Glaze what R’s they’ve made progress with beyond Scott Brown and King. Glaze reports back “through spending dold is only one I have. More broadly through pressure – Grimm, lance, frelinghausen.”
That breaks down to:
– Robert Dold, Congressman Illinois (Chicago suburbs)
– Scott Brown, former Senator
– Peter King, Congressman NY (dangerous as he’s a committee chair for Homeland Security — he’d be all about putting “domestic terrorists” in their place)
– Michael Grimm, Congressman NY Long Island (Marine vet, FBI agent, accused of pulling duty gun in a nightclub to settle scores)
– Leonard Lance, Congressman NJ
– Rodney Procter Frelinghuysen, Congressman NJ. Lots of work on vets.
Looks like squishy RINOs in the Northeast, honestly. Several vets. I wonder if pushing Service Rifle & CMP would be a way to head these guys off? It needs to be pointed out that these AWBs absolutely crush CMP activities.
Sorry for all the comments. There’s just tons of stuff ot mine in there.
P. 74: Mark Glaze and John Feinblatt are confused about how many supporters they have.
Feinblatt thinks it is 850K+. Glaze things ~700K, as the higher numbers include “Duplicates and those that are just names.” They really want an email address. They see harvesting the email as a name they “own and can use.”
P. 79: Hilariously, the “Demand a PLan” commercial filming site has security. So, security is good for the DAP campaign but not for schools? Hypocrisy, anyone?
P. 84: “The NRA said to avoid humiliation they’d expect him [Obama] to veto the background check bill but he had to sign the ccw bill this year.” They then go on to talk about how a veto of CCW (presumably reciprocity) would humiliate the NRA and be a public win.
P. 94: They talk about starting in on industry in NY. They want to try and pick up industry partners that “NSSF screwed when they agreed to microstamp.”
P. 100: Targeting Mastercard and Flowers (mail order flower place?). They want to put pressure on retailers so they come to the negotiating table “weakened.”
Check 84 again. I think they were talking about the CCW bill in Michigan that Rick Snyder vetoed.
Re: Pg 100…. I think it’s noteworthy how many things they mention here never happened.
Anyone figured out a rhyme or reason for the censoring? Some interesting censored parts in the bank records. Trips to Washington for lobbying and one marked attorney general. Then page 163 is $75,000 for someone/thing with an L or M name, but the reason for payment is marked out as well. Lots of periodic consultant fees in 2012 to blacked-out names too.
I couldn’t figure out the rhyme or reason, but they did a sloppy job in a lot of parts.
Anyone tried opening the PDFs in Illustrator or Photoshop yet, just in case they were not merely sloppy, but lazy and stupid?
“If someone is more familiar with the process, it would be worth knowing exactly in what manner MAIG is/was coordinating with AG Kane’s office.”
You should contact Prince about this. He’s a PA attorney and seems likely to be interested in this.
I would certainly be interested in knowing what kind of communications went back and forth between AG Kane and MAIG. Is there a chance that someone will follow up with an FOIA request?
Too funny Sebastion – “I can read very fast, but at that speed I miss an awful lot”.
That’s like Shirley Mclaine in “The Apartment” (a favorite movie of mine) telling Jack Lemon that she “can type up a storm, I just can’t spell”.
:)
But thanks for reading thru it, no matter how much you missed.
One thing that really jumps out at me is their continued misconception that modern-style rifles and over-10-round magazines are owned/valued by only a small minority of gun owners.
For example, the Hart email on page 428 where they are kicking around the idea of starting an astroturf “Gun Owners For Straight-Stocked Guns Only” sort of group, and they speak as if they think that hunters and “Ducks Unlimited” types outnumber owners of “assault weapons” and over-10-round guns/magazines.
What they don’t appear to realize is that 2 to 4 times as many Americans own “assault weapons” and >10 round magazines as hunt, and many/most hunters also own nonhunting/defensive/tactical guns. Their proposed bans are arguably twice as offensive, and half as mainstream, as fighting to ban all hunting.
Nor do any of them appear to be aware of just how rare rifle homicide is compared to homicide by homicides by other firearms or other weapons in general (only ~2.5% of murders involve *any* type of rifle, “assault weapon” or not). Skimming those emails, I don’t even think they are aware of that fact at all, or even that homicide by weapon type is tracked by the Uniform Crime Reports (Table 20, Murder by State and Type of Weapon).
On pages 310-311 there is a string of January 3 e-mails mentioning a potential female Republican lobbyist who would feel “privileged” to work on gun control. They take great pains to redact her name. But on page 320 there is a January 4 e-mail mentioning breakfast with a potential lobbyist and they put her url – Jamie Brown Hantman. Sounds like we need to spread the word to our republican legislators that they need to shut the door in her face when she comes calling.